I guess this is a question for the administrators. Why do old posts (and sometimes not-so-old posts) disappear? Some of the really really old posts from the very beginning of this MB are still there, but some have strangely disappeared. And as I said in another thread, I am certain that posts from as little as six months ago have disappeared. What's up? Let's get the mechanics of this out in the open.

(Edited by jamiecarroll at 3:22 pm on Jan. 18, 2004)

My guess is that topics are pruned frequently, but ones that the moderators/administrators want to keep are exempt from being deleted.

Well, they don't go to Heaven where the angels fly. (they) Go to a lake of fire and fry.

Won't see 'em again till the fourth of July

I just thought I'd give this one the ol bumpity-bump-bump, because the question has still, uh, not been answered.

Please, BrianW, give us the truth, even if it hurts!

BrianW is soaking his ass at Club Med in Crested Butte. He won't be around for awhile. He gets back Sunday. I guess the monkeys are in charge of primate house until he gets back since management is obviously out of the country too...

Now is the time to strike, we should take advantage

(Edited by richarddawson at 2:46 am on Jan. 31, 2004)

I"m saving up huge caches of poo to toss at them....

You guys are up too late. Go to bed.

I seriously don't think that either Michael or BrianW care enough about what was said in 2001 to go back through and trim and snip out posts. I also think that they only have the capability of deleting threads, not posts. Their policy on controlling what is said on this board is very hands-off.

I have two guesses:

1) Check your memory. Maybe a post of something said was not in the thread where you think it is. I usually have to dig to find early posts, but I've never just not found one. It could be that you didn't post it, posted it on another board, or like I said, just put it in a different thread from where you thought it was. The human memory is capable of doing any of the three.

2) The more likely story of which I am suspicious is that the posts were lost when the board software was changed over to the current version of invision board (see Tom Foolery's history of the board). In that change-over, much of the encoding changed, making all of the old Quote blocks incorrectly coded. To me, it is quite possible that when that happened, some of the old posts were not loaded onto this board.

I have nothing to back these up.

Guess 1 is wrong. I clearly remember saying certain things in certain threads that have disappeared. Guess 2 is plausible.

Agreed that #1 is not a viable explanation. I have an elephant's memory.

The thing about #2 is: why did some posts survive "the switch" and others (sometimes from the same thread!) not?

I'm just giving possible explanations. Number 1 is possible for any human, because the human (or elephant) brain is fallible.

Option 2 is just a guess, but I think it is more likely. Why? I don't think any of these missing posts have come about since the board changed over. I seriously seriously doubt that michael or BrianW would care enough to go back through and prune posts.

As for how some were lost and some were not, well, I wish that someone who is into networking computers and works as a software developer could help me out on that one...

isn't thelawnwrangler's quote from an old post? when i typed it into the search, a thread came up but the quote wasn't in a post. i've been very confused about that for a while.

You mean his signature?


I've noticed the search engine on here takes some liberties on its searches.

I haven't deleted any threads. My guess is there's another quirk in the software (like with the uploading of avatars) that might randomly delete certain threads. I have not actively "moderated" these boards, so no pruning takes place. I'm sorry if there are missing threads. Hopefully we'll be upgrading the software to the board in the next few months that'll take care of some of these bugs.

Thank you for the explanation. That's all I wanted to know. Have a great day.

It's actual posts from threads that are still there that I have noticed missing, for the record.

The search engine is a bit tricky sometimes, and I think that the manner in which it returns results is not very helpful. However, I think all of the old topics are there; you just have to dig for them sometimes.

The hardest thing to find is something in a thread that's been "resurrected." The search results are sorted by the last time someone posted in that thread. So, for example, if you're searching for Eno's words of widom, you'd expect them to be towards the bottom of the list since they were written very early in the board's life. However, if someone has posted in that same topic in the recent past, it will be listed higher up in the results.

The only posts that I know are missing are the ones made by members who have been banned, and I think only one member can claim that. Those posts still exist; you just can't view them.